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Contents 1 Introduction . 4 Intended audience . 4 For more information . 4 2 Getting Started . 6 What you need for InDesign Server scripting . 6 Using Scripts from this Document . 7 Other JavaScript development options . 7 InDesign and InDesign Server . 8 Your first InDesign Server script . 9 Adding features to “Hello World” . 11 A simple script for running scripts . 15 Converting an InDesign script to InDesign Server . 16 3 Constructing a Document . 18 Overview . 18 Setting up measurement units and master spread margins . 19 Adding a baseline grid . 21 Adding master page items . 22 Adding master text frames . 24 Overriding master page items and adding text . 26 Adding and applying a paragraph style . 27 Placing a text file . 29 Placing a graphic . 30 4 Middle Eastern Scripting Guide . 34 Setting up a document . 34 Working with text . 36 Setting paragraph attributes . 42 Setting character attributes . 44 Using styles . 47 Working with tables . 49 3 1 Introduction Adobe® InDesign® Server is a powerful addition to your Adobe InDesign tool set. In addition to the high quality typesetting, page-layout, color, and output features of InDesign, InDesign Server provides extra capabilities for enterprise-wide document processing. This document gives important background information for creating scripts for InDesign Server. It provides simple examples of common scripting operations. NOTE: We strongly recommend that you develop InDesign Server scripts using InDesign CS6. Intended audience This document is for software developers who want to extend the capabilities of Adobe InDesign by writing plug-ins or by writing applications that integrate InDesign with a publication workflow. This document assumes that: You are a programmer with a working understanding of one of the supported scripting languages: AppleScript, JavaScript, or Visual Basic. You have a basic understanding of the InDesign scripting object model. You have a basic understanding of TCP/IP-based, client-server environments. You are familiar with SOAP and know how to use it. You are familiar with your system’s and your network server’s port configurations and know how to configure them. You or your team are experienced at building and supporting customer solutions. For more information Getting Started with Adobe InDesign Server Development provides basic information about running InDesign Server, including installation instructions and system requirements. It includes a simple demonstration of InDesign Server’s capabilities. To learn scripting terminology and to understand the InDesign object model, read "Scripting and the InDesign object model" in the Adobe InDesign Scripting Tutorial. Adobe InDesign Scripting Guide provides details on creating scripts for InDesign. For details about AppleScript, VBScript, or JavaScript, see the documentation for those languages. InDesign online scripting resources For more information on InDesign Server scripting, see the following Web sites: http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/scripting/index.html 4 CHAPTER Introduction For more information 5 http://forums.adobe.com/community/indesign/indesign_scripting— The InDesign scripting user-to-user forum. In the forum, scripters can ask questions, post answers, and share their newest scripts. The forum contains hundreds of sample scripts. http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/scripting/index.html 2 Getting Started This chapter introduces the languages used for scripting and the differences between scripting for InDesign Server and for InDesign. It provides instructions for creating a simple script and for converting InDesign scripts to InDesign Server scripts. And it provides a simple script for running scripts. What you need for InDesign Server scripting The language you use to write scripts depends on the scripting system of your platform: AppleScript for Mac OS®, VBScript for Windows®, or JavaScript for either platform. Although the scripting languages differ, the ways in which they work with InDesign are very similar. Each sample script in this document is shown in all three scripting languages. Translating a script from one language to another is fairly easy. JavaScript InDesign supports JavaScript for cross-platform scripting in both Mac OS and Windows. InDesign’s JavaScript support is based on an Adobe implementation of JavaScript known as ExtendScript. The ExtendScript interpreter conforms to the current, ECMA 262 standard for JavaScript. All language features of JavaScript 1.5 are supported. Adobe Illustrator®, Adobe Photoshop®, and other Adobe Creative Suite® products also use the ExtendScript JavaScript interpreter. While you can write scripts using other versions of JavaScript, like Microsoft® JScript (on Windows) or Late Night Software’s OSA JavaScript (on Mac OS), the terms you use in those languages are not the same as the terms you use in ExtendScript. ExtendScript examples do not work in other JavaScript versions. Because ExtendScript tools and features are used in several Adobe products, we consolidated all ExtendScript documentation. To learn more about JavaScript utilities like the ScriptUI user-interface module and the ExtendScript Toolkit (a JavaScript development environment and object-model inspector), see JavaScript Tools Guide. You can also create scripts for InDesign Server that interact with other Creative Suite 5 applications, using ActionsScript and the Creative Suite extensibility model; see “Other JavaScript development options” on page 7. Windows To use InDesign scripting in Windows, you can use JavaScript or some version of Microsoft Visual Basic, like VBScript. The Visual Basic tutorial scripts in this document are written in VBScript. We chose VBScript because no added software is required to run or edit VBScripts. Other versions of Visual Basic include Visual Basic 5 Control Creation Edition